Multibeam Raises $31 Million Series B to Advance E-Beam Lithography for AI Chip Manufacturing
核心洞察
Multibeam Corp. (搜索) secured $31 million in Series B funding led by Onto Innovation and Lam Capital to accelerate development of next-generation multi-column E-Beam Lithography (搜索) platforms.
The company's maskless lithography technology enables advanced packaging solutions for AI and quantum computing (搜索) applications, with capabilities for interconnects below 1μm.
Since shipping its first production system last year, global semiconductor manufacturers have shown increased interest in Multibeam's electron beam-based patterning solution.
Multibeam Corp. (搜索) announced it has raised $31 million in Series B funding from global investors led by Onto Innovation Inc. (搜索) and Lam Capital, the venture capital arm of Lam Research Corp. (搜索) The oversubscribed round also included UMC Capital and MediaTek Capital, alongside several leading financial and corporate investors and existing stakeholders.
The Santa Clara-based company will use the proceeds to accelerate development of its next-generation multi-column E-Beam Lithography (搜索) (EBL) platform for 300mm wafer and panel-level maskless lithography. The funding will also support development of applications enabling silicon innovations to meet the lower-energy and higher-performance demands of artificial intelligence (搜索) and related technologies.
Advanced Packaging for AI Era
Multibeam's platform offers a production-grade tool providing full-wafer field of view, exceptional depth of focus, maskless writing, and the ability to write unique patterns. These capabilities target new frontiers in chip design for quantum computing (搜索), photonics, MEMS (搜索), compound semiconductors and power devices.
"For the last decade, advances in packaging have ushered in new eras for semiconductors," said Onto Innovation CEO Michael Plisinski. "First, the adoption of copper pillar and fan-out packaging helped power the mobile era and now chiplet architectures are powering the AI era. Future innovation lies in advanced packaging solutions."
Plisinski highlighted the technology's potential for packaging with interconnects below 1μm, stating the company sees "enormous potential for Multibeam's direct-write lithography technology to enable denser interconnects between chips cost-effectively."
Production System Gains Traction
Since shipping its first EBL production system last year, interest from global semiconductor manufacturers has increased for emerging applications uniquely enabled by high-productivity electron beam-based patterning solutions that complement conventional optical lithography.
Audrey Charles, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Advanced Packaging at Lam Research and President of Lam Capital, emphasized the technology's relevance to current market demands. "Heterogenous chip-to-chip integration is essential for delivering the lower power, higher performance semiconductors needed to meet the rapidly escalating demands of AI compute," she said.
Technology Platform Capabilities
The company's Multicolumn E-Beam Lithography (搜索) system represents the industry's first MEBL system built for volume production. The technology provides large field of view, deep depth of focus, and maskless pattern writing capabilities.
UMC Capital President Kris Peng noted the system's flexibility: "Multibeam has developed a highly flexible lithography tool capable of patterning fine features across full wafers. This new type of direct-wafer writing system with high resolution, large depth of focus, and wafer-scale field of view, opens the aperture on the type of chips that can be made."
Applications include rapid prototyping, next-generation advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration, chip identification and traceability, high-mix quick-turn manufacturing, high-performance compound semiconductors, high-efficiency silicon photonics, and 3D MEMS (搜索) structures.
Market Positioning and Growth
The funding marks the next phase of growth for the EBL technology leader, building upon existing partnerships with companies including EDA leader Synopsys (搜索). MediaTek Capital Partner Brian Hsu highlighted the system's development advantages, stating "Multibeam's system enables rapid time to prototype and time to market. These new capabilities enable agile development of a wide variety of novel and diverse applications."
Multibeam Founder and Chairman Dr. David K. Lam expressed appreciation for the investor support: "We are excited to welcome our new investors. In addition to funding, they bring experience, insight and wisdom acquired from decades of developing breakthrough technologies that advanced the global semiconductor industry."